Read Online Time Travelers Strictly Cash by Spider Robinson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Spider Robinson
Tags: Speculative Fiction
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consistency to his character; he’s an ex-teengang member, big and strong when the plot requires it, but most of the time he acts like a timid chump; he is a professional empath, and yet he gets suckered into buying the metaphysics of a sociopath gang leader with nary a quiver. And the fmal group of villains to be dragged onstage, comic-opera Com-Yew-Nists Who Want To Make
*1980 update; to give you an idea how well my memory serves me, the shortest version, a novella, won the Nebula in 1971.
The World A Conformist Utopia So They Can Power Trip Us (but get this: they’re telepathic, see…) went down like two tablespoons of peanut butter.
Which leaves me astounded. For years I have watched Kate MacLean write circles around a large lot of folks, and upon receiving the first novel I’ve seen by her I rejoiced, expecting something above average. But this is barely adequate. The first chapter, in which we meet George, the high-sensitivity empath who works as a locator for the Rescue Squad, is really excellent-but the book as a whole lacks an internal consistency somehow, and suspending that disbelief starts to give you cramps. I’m disappointed. I don’t object to a simple series-of-episodes-but the cast should be continuous.
Getting near the bottom, now. Funny SF novels, when they work, are among the funniest things ever written: e.g., Niven & Gerrold’s The Flying Sorcerer, a sizable chunk of Keith Laumer’s work, and the new Bester novel. Some are a trifle strained,but still make you giggle consistently: e.g. Bob Toomey’s World of Trouble. And some are as strained as the stuff that goes in I.V. bottles: e.g., The Wilk Are Among Us, by Isidore Haiblum(Doubleday, $5.95).
Since Stan Schmidt’s book had turned out so well, I decided to try the one that came with it; but when I got to the part where the ferocious and homidical nil! says to the alien protagonist, “If I wasn’t a bit under the weather, and you didn’t have that crude mind-block on-really, under ordinary conditions it wouldn’t do at all, you know-I’d give you such a hit!” I began to suspect that the stack of handkerchiefs I’d laid in against tears of laughter might be superfluous:
Everybody in the book is named Leonard or Ernest or Marviii, extraterrestrials who’ve never heard of Earth call each other boychik, and at odd intervals Haiblum succumbs to Zelazny’s Syndrome: the habit of stringing together sentence fragments.
As paragraphs.
In groups of six of seven.
For no discernible reason.
Like a freshman art student.
Making a collage.
Or some.
Thing.
Followed by two skipped lines and a block of more or less standard copy. There’s a lot of action, a cast of thousands, and a plot that would confound a panel consisting of Ketib Laumer, P.O. Wodehouse and Avram Davidson, and if you use an Ashley wood-burning stove and don’t subscribe to a newspaper you’ll be interested to know that the hardcover edition fits snugly into the firebox and will support a good base of kindling and mixed hardwood. I recommend maple if you can get it.
And so at last we come to Sprague de Camp’s Antique Shoppe.
I know there are a horde of you Lovecraft freaks out there, and maybe some of you are Trekkie-type groupies, and I really truly do believe that a reviewer has a duty to finish a book before publishing his views on it, but honest to Christ, fellas. The Life of H.P. Lovecraft by L. Sprague de Camp (Doubleday, $12.95) is simply above and beyond the call of whatever Baen is underpaying me. [Sold! he shrieked.-Ed.] it is no bigger than a Smith-Corona portable, clearly the result of a literally incredible amount of time and energy, and I tried, cross my heart. But do any of you really want to know that at the age of two, Lovecraft’s golden curls led his landlady to call him “Little Sunshine”?
I have in my possession a volume of comparable size, which was commissioned by state legislature, printed at taxpayers’ expense in
*1980 update; to give you an idea how well my memory serves me, the shortest version, a novella, won the Nebula in 1971.
The World A Conformist Utopia So They Can Power Trip Us (but get this: they’re telepathic, see…) went down like two tablespoons of peanut butter.
Which leaves me astounded. For years I have watched Kate MacLean write circles around a large lot of folks, and upon receiving the first novel I’ve seen by her I rejoiced, expecting something above average. But this is barely adequate. The first chapter, in which we meet George, the high-sensitivity empath who works as a locator for the Rescue Squad, is really excellent-but the book as a whole lacks an internal consistency somehow, and suspending that disbelief starts to give you cramps. I’m disappointed. I don’t object to a simple series-of-episodes-but the cast should be continuous.
Getting near the bottom, now. Funny SF novels, when they work, are among the funniest things ever written: e.g., Niven & Gerrold’s The Flying Sorcerer, a sizable chunk of Keith Laumer’s work, and the new Bester novel. Some are a trifle strained,but still make you giggle consistently: e.g. Bob Toomey’s World of Trouble. And some are as strained as the stuff that goes in I.V. bottles: e.g., The Wilk Are Among Us, by Isidore Haiblum(Doubleday, $5.95).
Since Stan Schmidt’s book had turned out so well, I decided to try the one that came with it; but when I got to the part where the ferocious and homidical nil! says to the alien protagonist, “If I wasn’t a bit under the weather, and you didn’t have that crude mind-block on-really, under ordinary conditions it wouldn’t do at all, you know-I’d give you such a hit!” I began to suspect that the stack of handkerchiefs I’d laid in against tears of laughter might be superfluous:
Everybody in the book is named Leonard or Ernest or Marviii, extraterrestrials who’ve never heard of Earth call each other boychik, and at odd intervals Haiblum succumbs to Zelazny’s Syndrome: the habit of stringing together sentence fragments.
As paragraphs.
In groups of six of seven.
For no discernible reason.
Like a freshman art student.
Making a collage.
Or some.
Thing.
Followed by two skipped lines and a block of more or less standard copy. There’s a lot of action, a cast of thousands, and a plot that would confound a panel consisting of Ketib Laumer, P.O. Wodehouse and Avram Davidson, and if you use an Ashley wood-burning stove and don’t subscribe to a newspaper you’ll be interested to know that the hardcover edition fits snugly into the firebox and will support a good base of kindling and mixed hardwood. I recommend maple if you can get it.
And so at last we come to Sprague de Camp’s Antique Shoppe.
I know there are a horde of you Lovecraft freaks out there, and maybe some of you are Trekkie-type groupies, and I really truly do believe that a reviewer has a duty to finish a book before publishing his views on it, but honest to Christ, fellas. The Life of H.P. Lovecraft by L. Sprague de Camp (Doubleday, $12.95) is simply above and beyond the call of whatever Baen is underpaying me. [Sold! he shrieked.-Ed.] it is no bigger than a Smith-Corona portable, clearly the result of a literally incredible amount of time and energy, and I tried, cross my heart. But do any of you really want to know that at the age of two, Lovecraft’s golden curls led his landlady to call him “Little Sunshine”?
I have in my possession a volume of comparable size, which was commissioned by state legislature, printed at taxpayers’ expense in
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